Savage 22-410 Slugs Making.

[bouncer50]

Looking for a slug mold and a buck shot mold. I believe mine is a 2 half inch chamber. Does anyone make a 32 long chamber insert. Can it be rechamber to 3 inch shell

[pietro]

.

If your intent is to use .410 slugs for hunting, before you spend $$ for nil, I would suggest that you first contact your state's F&G Dept, as to the legality. . :Bright idea:

E.G. - My state forbids slugs smaller than 20ga for use on deer, the .410 specifically. (I guess they never heard of a 28ga)

.

[bouncer50]

I am not planing to hunt deer with it. I was thinking it would make a light hiking gun for the woods. A brass shell 3 inch shell with slugs or buck shot, bird shot. I was thinking since it has adjustable sights it should be accurate shooting slugs A chamber sleeve to shoot 32 longs 38 special would also be nice for cheap shooting

[ascast]

410 Forster type slugs/molds are very few and far between, mostly I guess as they are not legal in most states. You might look at pistol bullets or light rifle bullets of correct dia.

[Rustyleee]

Bouncer I believe if you take a standard .357 boolit it will fit just about right in a standard .410 shot cup/ wad which could then be loaded as is. Check your barrel to see how it fits.

[curator]

I load 3, (.36) 000 buckshot in MagTech all brass shells for use in my Savage 24 .22/410. They usually print about a hand's width at 25 yards. Mine has a full choke and is chambered for 3" shells. The choke measures .385 at the muzzle so I haven't tried anything larger. Commercial .410 slug loads are a joke as far as accuracy goes.

[Outpost75]

I have lots of experience with the .410. Slugs are accurate in some guns, but you can determine that only by testing. I found them mostly ineffective on game larger than groundhogs or foxes, at ranges beyond about 30 yards. Grouping of shotgun slugs from a plain, bead-sighted single-barrel shotgun at best is 1 inch spread per ten yards of range. YOUR gun may not hit where it looks, so for any hope of success you must test and practice. You could spend $25 or more on ammo just to find out that it doesn't work in your gun.

A .410 slug weighs about 80 grains. While its initial velocity is high, it loses half its striking energy in the first 50 yards, where its energy compares to a .25-20 rifle firing black powder loads. Certainly no bear gun!

Better than .410 slugs for varmints larger than raccoons or for home defense are the 3-inch five-pellet 00 buckshot loads now popular for home defense and widely available. Five-pellet, 3-inch 00 buck is the best choice and puts the same number of pellets on an Army E silhouette at 25 yards that a cylinder bore 12-ga. riot gun firing 9-pellet 00 buck does at 40 yards.

You can general expect 4 out of 5 pellets striking an E silhouette at 25 yards, which is a killing pattern. At 40 yards the .410 gets at best 3 hits out of 5, which is barely adequate, if you accept the standard that kinetic energy delivered on target should equal that of a hit from an M1911 .45 pistol firing service ammunition. THAT is the standard that the US Army uses.

If you are lucky, you might land 2 pellets out of 5 at 50 yards on your Zombie silhouette, if your particular gun likes the load, still, better shoot him twice! If your Daddy’s .410 happens to be a stone killer, it may indeed be that you have a great gun and that mine are all ***, because the luck of the blind monkey rules the universe in these things.

Each 00 buckshot pellet fired from a .410 has about the same energy at 25 yards as a .32 ACP 71-grain FMJ pistol slug. Less than 3 pellets hits do not total our magic 350 ft.lbs. of kinetic energy and therefore cannot be considered effective for defense or hunting deer-sized game. The longest range at which you can expect all 3 pellets hitting when firing the shorter 2-1/2 inch buckshot rounds is about 20 yards from a typical single-barrel shotgun.

If using the Judge revolver no farther than 7 yards in the best case, based on one gun that I tested. Velocity REALLY drops off quickly from a .410 handgun. Winchester 5-pellet 00 buck gets 1230 fps from a standard shotgun, and only 800 or so from the short-barrelled Judge revolver and 880 fps from the long-barreled one.

When using a .410 with bird shot for hunting small game, it will work OK if you stay within its severe range limitations. The most important thing to remember is that given its small payload (1/2 oz. in the 2-1/2 inch shell and 11/16 oz. in the 3 inch shell) you have very few pellets in the pattern. In order for a shot pattern to be effective on a game animal the size of a rabbit, or a bird the size of a pheasant or duck, you need to achieve a number of pellets hits equal to the shot size, such as six No. 6 or 8 No. 8 within 20 square inches or a 5 inch circle paper plate, about the size of a rabbit.

Having less than 200 shot in the shell makes obtaining effective patterns difficult beyond about 10 yards because the pattern spreads about 1 inch per yard of target distance. Using shot larger than 7-1/2 in the 3 inch shell or No.8 in the 2 inch shell is ineffective unless you limit ranges to 25 yards from a single-barrel shotgun, or 5 yards with the Judge revolver.

It is important to fire test patterns with your gun and ammo and to PRACTICE with the smaller gun, learning to acquire the target and shoot quickly, so that you have clear knowledge of its capabilities and develop enough shooting skill on your part to somewhat make up for its reduced effectiveness. The biggest drawback in using a .410 is that developing skill requires buying and shooting up more ammo in testing and practice to obtain that knowledge and maintain that skill.

A casual shooter needs to fire 100 shells a year at clay birds to simply maintain basic skills and not decline. To improve your skill you need to shoot a case of 250 shells a year just in practice. And .410 ammo costs about TWICE as much as the same number of 12-ga. or 20-ga. shells because the factories don't produce or sell as many. If you shop seasonal promotions you can buy case lots of "dove & quail" no. 8 or or "duck & pheasant" no. 6 12-ga. or 20-ga. loads reasonably, but not .410s. You won't find any bargains in .410 ammo. At least, I've never seen any.

In some areas it is difficult to find .410 cartridges in shot sizes smaller than No.6. Marketing people try to make up for the .410s lack of killing power by pushing larger shot, which is pure lunacy, particularly large shot such as No.4, which is entirely useless beyond 20 yards unless you happen to have a full choke barrel which "likes it". In those cases a gun may pattern so tightly that you must shoot it like a rifle, which means that you could have used your .22 pistol and saved a dollar to put that rabbit in the pot!

Shot sizes of No. 6 or larger should only be used in choke bore .410 guns which pattern the particular load well, within the ranges at which you have determined that they are actually "effective." A shot load throwing "effective" patterns means that you can reliably depend upon putting a number of pellets equal to the shot size, such as four No. 4s, five No. 5s, six No.6s, seven No.7-1/2s or eight No. 8 shot on your 5-inch paper plate at your given range. Determining this means firing in a rapidly thrown-up 2 second instinctive snap-shot. Misses with a single buckshot do not count anything!

Given the modest shot capacity of a .410 the maximum useful range at which you can expect effective game patterns with any confidence is only 25 yards under the best circumstances. With cylinder bore guns you may do no better than 20 yards...With a Judge revolver no more than 5-7 yards.. I can kill grouse with my slingshot flipping a stone that far for MUCH less money and more silently.

There is NO substitute for patterning your gun. You do not have to dissect shells, count pellets, put up a big piece of paper, count all the pellets, draw circles and figure pellet percentages. But it is necessary to determine where the center of your pattern falls in relation to the sights, and to assess whether patterns are uniform, or if they tend to be thicker towards the center or patchy around the edges.

Take a roll of wide butcher paper, roll it out and hang it along on a wire fence. Then take 5-inch paper plates, your simple representation of a rabbit, duck or pheasant. Staple these every 4 feet or so along the rolled out butcher paper until you have five or six of them. Now, then take your walking shotgun, load, walk TEN paces away from the fence, turn and fire quickly at the first plate you see. This should be natural-point snap shooting as you would at a flushing bird. Turn around, walk away another 5 paces, repeat, turn and shoot the next one, etc. until you have fired five patterns at 5 paper plates, the closest at ten paces and the farthest about 30 paces away. Try 35 paces only if you are a dreamer..... Looking these patterns over and repeating the exercise again with each shot size and counting the hits on the plate will give you a crystal clear perception of what your little .410 will (or won't) do.

After doing this exercise you will probably come to the same conclusions, which I did:

Use the .410 only where the reduced weight and cube of gun and ammo is worth its extra cost. Such as when you have a rifle-shotgun combo for the survival ruck in your boat, private aircraft or as a spare gun at the hunting or fishing camp. It is NOT your only shotgun to depend on. The .410 is a great as an EXTRA gun, especially for use by a recoil-shy family member.

Forget the .410 slug fantasy. Instead buy a hundred rounds of 5 pellet 00 for large varmints or defense use, 250 rounds of 3-inch No. 7-1/2s to hunt small game with and 250 rounds of 2-1/2" No. 8 for clay bird practice. Then have all users also pattern the gun so they can understand where it hits FOR THEM, and everyone PRACTICE with it. My two cents.

A brief how-to-do-it on loading all-brass .410s..... I've successfully done this, fire-forming .303 British or 9.3x74R brass and most recently using Magtech .410 all-brass shells from Midway. Load data, wads and assembly/crimping technique for all-brass shells are different from using modern plastic shells and wads.

In break-open shotguns, all-brass cases can be fire-formed from .303 British brass, which is cheap and plentiful. Charge the case with ten grains of any fast-burning pistol or shotshell powder. The powder type isn't important, almost anything you have around will work. Push a cotton ball down onto the powder, fill the case up to the shoulder with Cream of Wheat, then press a Gulf wax plug into the case mouth. Fire-form the case pointing the muzzle straight up. The resulting case is 2.25" in length. Cases should fire-form perfectly without splits on the first pop if they are mouth annealed first.

Cases which have been reloaded as rifle rounds several times absolutely must be annealed first!
A quickie on how to anneal rifle brass which works for this application: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVeRDAsrCfM

With Magtech brass use, 15.4 grains of #2400 powder, thrown from the RCBS Little Dandy powder measure, using the rotor #19. Place a Buffalo Arms .44 vegetable fiber 1/16” card over the powder, then two Buffalo Arms .44-45 wool felt cushion wads. LIGHTLY oil the top cushion wad only, applying TWO DROPS of SAE 30 weight motor oil with an eye dropper, squishing the wad between the fingers a few times to work the oil in, then wrapping the wad in a square of toilet paper, squeezing it again between the thumb and forefinger to wick out and absorb the excess oil.

A .45 Schofield case holds about half an ounce of lead shot to solder up a dip measure. Fill the case to within 1/8” of the case mouth with No. 7-1/2 or No.8 shot, insert another 1/16” card and glue in place with Elmers. You can get a little more shot in using the old fashioned card and fiber wad column, but my cylinder-bore gun patterns much better using the Federal No. 410SC (1/2 oz. Skeet) shot cup over the card, pouring the shot into that and closing the shell by crimping (or gluing with Elmer's) a .36 cal. card inside the top of the shot cup. If using plastic wads in Magtech brass is is absolutely necessary to place a card over-powder wad first, otherwise powder will leak past the shot cup, which is too small to seal the interior of the case wall, causing “bloopers.”

You can make a more finished-looking crimp by inserting a blank Lyman 450 sizer top punch into the seater die plug of a cut-off Lee .308 or .243 Winchester seating die, adjusting the seating stem to position the top card below the die shoulder. Use a .44 cal. Buffalo Arms card to fit the all-brass shell, or .36 cal. to fit inside the Federal shotcup when using that wad. You want to hold the overshot card slightly below the case mouth, as you bump the case mouth against the die shoulder to form a nicely rounded crimp.

When loading buckshot, insert the card firmly over the powder, as you did before. If using a Federal No.410SC plastic shotcup as a container for 00 buckshot the felt fiber cushion wads are not needed. A reminder again, plastic shotcups MUST NOT be used in all-brass cases without an over-powder card, because omitting the card results in powder leaking past the wad, causing “bloopers.” After firmly seating the Federal No.410SC plastic wad column, drop four 00 buck into the shotcup, then add one cast .390” round ball cast of SOFT lead on top of the stack. Adjust the seater so the top ball is crimped positively in the end of the shell. Alternately you can load only FOUR pellets of 000 buck in the shot cup, or the same number of .390" cast round balls in the brass shell with fiber wad column and no plastic shot cup.

Four .39" cast round balls total 350 grains, about 0.8 of an ounce. Before attempting to use any ball larger than 00 buck, check size by seeing if the ball will drop freely through the choke of its own weight only. Each .39 ball at 25 yards has 150 ft.-lbs. of energy, approximating a .380 ACP pocket pistol at the same distance. If the .390 balls indeed fall through your gun's choke and they pattern well, the increase in energy provided is dramatic! I use the same 15.4 grain charge of #2400 in my gun, it is, admittedly a "hot" load. Your mileage may vary, so I suggest reducing the charge to 12 grains initially, using Little Dandy Rotor #15 and working back up cautiously.

The 1951 Ideal Handbook provides data with #2400 powder for .410 shells with conventional wad columns. It suggests thickness of the filler wad(s) should be not less than 1/2 bore diameter and not more than bore diameter. Minimum filler wad thickness in the 410 bore is 0.205 inches.

A .444 Marlin sizer die with Lee No.5 shell holder can be used to resize brass cases if necessary. Prime cases with large pistol primers. The RCBS Little Dandy Rotors #19 or #20 measure appropriate charges of Alliant #2400. Thumb over powder card into case mouth, and slide firmly onto the powder using a dowel. Similarly seat the filler wad(s), or plastic shotcup, if used. Add shot and top card or buckshot. Glue top card or crimp, if a suitable die is available. That’s all there is to it.
144635144636144637

[Reg]

Outpost75
That is about the best and most update and complete writeup on the 410 that I have seen. Nice job !!
About all I could add is I have used 44 Marlin cases with good results. 303 as well and both actually worked very well.

[smoked turkey]

Outpost75, I totally agree with Reg. That post on .410 loading is fantastic. Without a doubt the most complete and detailed write up I have seen. I have been loading up some .410s with .310" round-ball loads in a Federal shotcup just to give it a try. I also sized some .375 RB in my .360 sizer but haven't loaded them yet. These were to be used in a Bond derringer with a 3.5" barrel. Your write up helps me greatly. I would think this info could be a sticky for future reference.Thank you.

[Outpost75]

FYI, I had Erik at WWW.hollowlointmold.com cut 1/2" off a .38-56 seater die for me to make a .410 crimper, but a .444 Marlin, .308 or. 243 Win. will also work.

[bouncer50]

Great story outpost75 for the great post on the 410 reloading help.

[leadman]

My first gun was a Savage 24 in 410/22lr that my Dad bought me. I took very little game with it as a kid and did stop hunting for awhile. After I got out of the Army I started hunting again and shortly bought a 12 gauge pump. Sold the 24.
My wife bought me a Savage 24DL in 20gauge/22 mag from a pawn shop one day. I used that gun for many years and took lots of game with it. I was loading 3" shells for hunting quail here in AZ. In the rolling hills by a lake I used to shoot the Federal 50gr 22 mag right next to the rabbits and the spray of gravel would kill them.

Do wish I still had the first 24 back, just for sentimental reasons.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Federal has .410 slug loads with 125 gr slugs at 1775fps. That is more than a 357 mag. However the accuracy is yet to be determined, and I think much more than 25-30 yards is pushing it.

These would be cheaper in the long and short run to getting all set up to load .410 slugs unless you are already set up to load .410's. Ballistic Products has Thug Slugs that are reasonable and 125 gr also with a attached wad. They are as good as you are going to get as far as .410 slugs are concerned.

And what Outpost said too.

Randy

[kenyerian]

I had my grandson's set up with a 410 Handi with a scope that shot Brenneke USA Magnum Ammunition 410 Bore 3" 1/4 oz Silver Rifled Slug very well. He shot his first buck with it . It was walking right to us and he shot it in the chest at 20 yards. It was walking up hill and the slug angled up, hit the back bone and passed through the length of the deer. The brenneke slug will do the job at close range. We limited all shots to 25 yards or less. They have all moved on to bigger and more effective calibers now but at close range Brenneke"s will get the job done. They have a 1/4 oz,(109.3750gr) slug that shot pretty well in the full choke handi. They had no trouble hitting pop cans at 25 yards.